Leonard Friesen's book provides an expansive history of Mennonite communities from their initial settlements in imperial Russia to their near universal emigration in the waning days of the Soviet Union. Drawing on published primary source collections and rich secondary literature, Friesen's narrative spans territories in present-day Ukraine, Russia, and Central Asia. His central goal, a worthy one, is to restore agency to a marginal religious community, side-stepping simplistic narratives that place Mennonites in isolation from or in opposition to their surrounding world. The result is a history that situates Mennonites squarely within a broader story of western modernization and secularization.
The book is divided into three parts: origins, imperial Russia, and the Soviet era. Part I begins with the great reformers Erasmus and Ulrich Zwingli, who laid the foundation for the Mennonite theology and practice that emerged thereafter under the leadership of Anabaptist Menno Simons. Friesen then follows the Anabaptists as they moved eastward from the Netherlands to relative safety in Poland, beginning a “Golden Age” of economic and social integration for two centuries (64).
In Part II, Friesen charts the formation of Mennonite colonies in the Russian empire from their initial creation until the empire's collapse. Spurred in part by the gradual dismemberment of Poland and demands for military service in Prussia, and in part by direct enticement from a Russian empire eager for colonists, the first Mennonites departed Prussian lands for the colony of Khortitsa/Chortitza, followed by a second colony at Molochna/Molotschna, now both within the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine. Friesen credits Pietist reformer Johann Cornies for the settlements’ transformation into coherent, economically robust communities before successive and overlapping crises in the latter half of the nineteenth century imperiled these gains. Yet even as threats of conscription triggered mass emigration to North America, the fin de siècle saw dramatic population growth, geographic expansion, and wealth accumulation, even as the wealth gap within the settlements remained unresolved. Friesen argues that a “distinctive Mennonite commonwealth” had formed within the Russian empire, one marked by “imperial integration, not separation” (144).
In Part III, the Soviet era, Friesen opens his narrative with an account of the Eichenfeld massacre of Mennonites by Nestor Makhno's forces in 1919, one of many incidents of mass violence against Mennonites during this period of sustained warfare, revolution, and famine. By the end of the NEP era, thousands had emigrated before Soviet authorities barred further departures. Collectivization and dekulakization hit Mennonite communities particularly hard, both due to the landholdings of some community members and their status as religious and ethnic “others.” Friesen stresses the agency of Mennonites caught in this firestorm, noting their varied responses, from renewed faith to mass emigration to accommodation. The Soviet state, for its part, increasingly saw Mennonites as a fifth column and decimated the population through imprisonment and execution in the Great Terror, followed by labor conscription and mass deportations in the wake of the German invasion in 1941. Those left behind largely welcomed the advancing German troops and then fled westward as those same German forces collapsed. Friesen notes that most histories tend to focus on the postwar émigré communities, with little if any attention to those who remained on Soviet soil before near universal emigration abroad in the Gorbachev era. Friesen fill in some of this missing narrative, but more remains to be written by future scholars.
The history that emerges from Friesen's narrative is one of a coherent, but complicated Mennonite identity that is adaptive and layered in response to massive internal and external processes of transformation and rupture. In his final “coda” chapter, as Friesen ventures into the post-Soviet period, he articulates a clear sense of loss at the diminished sense of religious identity among Mennonites in emigration. In contrast, the author is buoyed by signs of religious renewal among the handful who still live within formerly Soviet territories and who, the author hopes, offer the potential for a broader Christian revival against a secular west. Some chapters have conclusions; others do not. The book itself might have benefitted from an overarching conclusion in addition to or in place of its coda, although the author does offer a brief summation in this chapter. Overall, the book is a welcome addition to Soviet religious history and of value to scholars beyond those who study Mennonite communities.
